After a gap of five years, Kerala Tourism is gearing up to roll out a new tourism policy to check the fall in tourist arrivals, double foreign tourist arrivals, launch new tourism products and face new challenges in the burgeoning tourism sector of the State.
The draft tourism policy worked out by the tourism planners and officials on the basis of the 2012 tourism policy of the Sate and the manifesto of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) was with the government and was being vetted, official sources told The Hindu .
Although the draft policy had not been made public, the government on Monday kicked off the consultation process to seek opinion of the travel trade to include the suggestions before releasing it for deliberations. Minister for Tourism, Kadampally Surendran sat through along with V. Venu, Principal Secretary, Tourism, and Additional Director D. Balammurali to listen to the stakeholders.
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The thrust
The thrust of the 2017 tourism policy, it is learnt, will be on strengthening tourism infrastructure through comprehensive waste management programmes, construction of basic infrastructure at all major tourist destinations and improvement of wayside amenities, including signages and information centres.
A Spice Route Circuit, pilgrim tourism policy, annual calendar of major festivals, handicrafts festival, Responsible Tourism classification for tourism units, new scheme to create job-oriented skills for youths, especially from rural areas and conservation and preservation of heritage will get priority.
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At the meeting held in Mascot Convention Centre, the Confederation of Tourism Industry, Kerala, demanded among other things a Tourism Trade Facilitation Act for effective management of tourism sector, exhaustive Master Plan for tourism, relaunch of the present God’s Own Country branding and steps to improve basic infrastructure, connectivity, e-visa facility at airports, products and service quality.
The need for giving thrust on tourist-friendly liquor policy, ecotourism, health, wellness and medical tourism and on non-conventional energy sources was also highlighted.
To overcome the reduction of the peak tourist season, the Association of Tourism Trade Organisations, India suggested theme-based programme in October and a festival package in March. The Minister has told that the trade that one more round of discussion will be held on the tourism policy.
The first tourism policy was announced in 1995 underlining the importance of Public- Private Partnership. Tourism has come a long way since capturing new markets with its innovative products and marketing strategies. From hardly 50,000 foreign tourist arrivals in 1986, it has reached a status of 14, 210, 954 tourist arrivals in 2016, out of which 13,172,535 were domestic tourists.